President Sergio Mattarella on
Tuesday paid tribute to an anti-mafia priest gunned down by one
of the most powerful clans in the Neapolitan Camorra mafia 19
years ago.
Done Peppe Diana was gunned down by the Casalesi clan at the age
of 35 in Casal di Principe near Caserta on March 19, 1994.
He was murdered by the bloody clan, whose death threats have
more recently forced anti-mafia Gomorra writer Roberto Saviano
into police protection, for standing up to the Naples Mob and
continuing to denounce them in his sermons.
Paying homage to Father Diana on Italy's Day of Memory and
Commitment in Remembrance of Mafia Victims, Mattarella told a
group of local young people in Casal di Principe, after visiting
the late priest's grave, that they should be proud of the way
the town has largely succeeded in freeing itself of the
Casalesis' baleful influence after a series of criminal trials
and political reforms.
"Dear girls and boys, you must be proud of being born in this
land, which has been able to carry out this true, great,
renaissance", said Mattarella.
"You must feel the pride of being co-citizens of Don Diana. You
must refuse, starting in the school benches, the subjugation,
violence, prevarication and bullying that are a soup cultivating
the mafia mentality.
"Always remember that you are the generation of hope, the one to
which Father Diana symbolically passed on the baton of
lawfulness".
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